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This is the Work Smart Hypnosis podcast, session number 431. Joann Abrahamsen on a potpourri of hypnotic techniques. Welcome to the Work Smart Hypnosis podcast with Jason Linett, your professional resource for hypnosis training and outstanding business success. Here’s your host, Jason Linett. Have you ever run to that person who was just so clearly passionate and excited about what they had to share that it was just so wonderfully infectious and just brought you into the journey even further? That’s my polite way of saying you’re about to listen to this phenomenal conversation that I had with Joann Abrahamsen. And it’s one where, admittedly, I didn’t have to work hard. And I say that with love and care. She is one of my favorite people in our entire industry.
You’re going to hear the story as to how I first saw her in action at a conference many years ago, presenting a three hour workshop where it was induction after induction, and just the passion and the skill and the care and the attention to detail is very clearly going to shine through inside of this week’s episode. And more importantly, it’s the understanding as to why these changes have been made, how these adjustments are being presented that I bring you behind the curtain for a moment of the podcast, and I’d say that sometimes people say something incredible and then I have to go. Tell me more about that. Do you have a story of when that was the case and I didn’t have to work hard? Again, I’ve said that already.
It’s the fact that as she began to share an insight around a technique, I didn’t have to ask further detail, because even better, she just launched into full on teaching, demoing and breaking methods down in such a beautiful way. So for those of you at any level of your hypnotic journey, whether you are brand new and just getting started, listen carefully to the attention, the detail and the precision behind so much of what she shares. And for those of you that are already out there perhaps working professionally, it’s the dialogues like this one that help us to reignite that passion once again and become really excited about it. I would share.
There’s a part of this conversation which may not necessarily be for everybody, though I definitely encourage lean into it, because those of you who are seasoned professionals, those of you that have been around for a while, it’s where Joanne was a contemporary of many of the people that we hear their names in every workshop, in every training, the people who are part of the foundation of this industry, and to go deeper into the. What was it like to be there? It’s this beautiful little reminder that these are real people, these are humans. And sometimes we reach this place of just having to take people off of a pedestal and go, oh, wait, they put on their shoes just like anyone else. Or sometimes we. Okay, I’ll call it out.
There’s this beautiful moment of I can’t imagine how this person who rose to great fame ever actually managed to hypnotize anybody. And it wasn’t a jab, it’s not an insult. It’s this moment of just looking at it from a whole new perspective and just, this is an entertaining conversation you do not want to miss. This is session number 431. We’ve been at this a while, and if you head over to worksmarthypnosis.com/431. That will bring you over to the show notes attached to this week’s episode. And I point you there specifically, worksmarthypnosis.com/431. Because Joanne’s written several books, there’s some amazing resources that she’s made available, and you can find them there over on that page. We’ve made the job very easy for you.
And while you’re there, we’re actually just a few weeks away from kicking into our very next worksmart Hypnosis live and online training event, which, for those of you that are brand new and looking to really jumpstart your journey with professional hypnosis, this is a program that has taken people from the ground up and helped them to launch as professionals. Then again, for those of you that are already out there working professionally and seeing clients, you may be surprised or you may not be surprised to find out that traditionally, half of our attendees are people, Joanne included, it turns out, who are attending because just they want to sharpen those skills, see another style of techniques. And this is, we’ve scientifically proven this, by the way, through research and various rigorous methods of testing.
This is the number one hypnosis training program taught by two instructors who don’t necessarily agree on everything and are still really good friends in spite of that, and also help to run a major organization and also includes the most appropriate quantity of anecdotes about dogs. Okay, so this might be the only one, but that’s my way of saying, once again, I’ve got Dr. Richard Nongard joining me as a co host for this event, where you can join the two of us. His model of work is based upon evidence based strategies for change. Let’s not just do the work modeled upon how they did it from the 19 hundreds to the 1940s. No. It’s time to update the work based on the proof of what has been scientifically proven to be effective in the hypnotic journey.
My approach is one of coming in with hypnotic phenomenon as well as conversational influence strategies which allow you to get the change in motion even before the client closes their eyes, and even for the client to validate the change is occurring because they can feel the change happening. For more like this, check out the details and watch the video. Tour class is starting soon. Over at the next worksmarthypnosislive.com. And with that, let’s dive in. Here we go. Session number 431, Joann Abrahamsen on a potpourri of hypnotic techniques.
I was twelve years old, and I bought a book that was advertised on the back of a comic book, the key to hypnotism. I looked through that book up until hypnotizing somebody, and then I said, yeah, I wonder if I could do this. Hey, ma, come here. So I was a precocious kid, and my mother really let me do things like that, and she trusted me. So I created a fixation point with a black button and a white dot in the middle. I handed it to her and I told her to stare at it. And I started to talk sleep, because back in those days, your eyes are getting heavy, your eyelids are closing. So I started talking sleep. According to the script in the book.
Yeah.
And my mother closed her eyes. So the book also said, when a person is in hypnosis, their eyes are looking up. So if you lift their eyelids, they should be looking up. So of course, I had to try that. So I walked over to my mother, lifted her eyelids, and she was in hypnosis. I said, damn, I hypnotized my mother. Okay, ma, about my allowance.
Yeah.
Well, back then, I didn’t know any better. So I said, oh, goodness, she’s in hypnosis now. What do I do? So I had to flip the pages real quick to where it said, bring the person out of hypnosis. And I did. And it just said, count from one to five. So I did. My mother opened her eyes and she said, oh, she says, I feel so relaxed. So that was my introduction. So I bought, or I bought. I read every book in my small public library on hypnosis, all three of them. And I kept being interested in it.
Yeah. Just to see if there’s a little bit more to this, I’m curious to ask if seeing it advertised in a comic book, do you remember what the appeal was? What the draw was.
Yeah, because I had an interest in hypnosis and in hypnotism. I don’t know, 910. Eleven years old. I don’t know why, because I probably saw something on. Oh, I know what it was. Dr. Kildare and Ben Casey. Back in the old days, Ben Casey hypnotized somebody. I think she was giving birth or she was doing a delivery. So he hypnotized her on the screen, and a few weeks later, in the Daily News, it had a picture of a woman watching the screen with her eyes closed, hypnotized by the tv. I said, wow, that’s very interesting. But it was then that the stations, the radio stations, banned the induction of hypnosis on the tv. Okay?
So, moving along, I was in my early, maybe 1920, and I was in college, and there was an advertisement on the student union that this psychologist was doing research to see how suggestible college students were to hypnosis. So I said, wow, this is a good chance for me to get a little bit more. So I called up, and this wonderful voice answers the phone and says, hello, I’m Dr. Field, with that really deep hypnotic voice. And I said, I’m interested. And so we set up a thing to time to come in, and it turned out that they did the Sanford Benet scale of one to 30, hypnotizability. And I was very suggestible. I was very suggestible. So Dr. Field asked me on a volunteer basis if I wanted to work with him, for him to develop his hypnotic technique. And I would learn.
He would teach me self hypnosis. And I had access to the dozens and dozens of books on hypnosis in his library.
Oh, that’s amazing.
That was the draw. So I did that for a year, and then I went to work. I had a full time job in an insurance agency, being a customer service rep. And one of the accounts that was brought in was the learning annex. Now, the learning annex rents space in high schools and colleges and leases it out. Not leases it out, but invites people to come in to teach various things. So Richard Hart, you know Richard Hart. Richard Hart was advertising in the brochure that he was doing a three hour, let’s see, the title was how to be a hypnotist, a lucrative new income opportunity. So I was, like, 34, 33 years old at the time. And I said, wow, I can learn to be a hypnotist. And lucrative. Really got my attention.
Yeah.
So I registered for the class. I took the three hour class. It was very interesting. He taught us how to formulate the suggestions in this three hour class taught us how to do the arms rising and falling, and we did with each other. I said, this is great. So I signed up for his basic course, which was over a weekend at the time, and then his advanced course, which was over another weekend. And I said, I really want to learn more. So I signed up for his internship, which met every two weeks for five months. And that’s how I started being a hypnotist. Now, I had a full time job. I had a husband, I had a child. And I said, you know, I could do this part time. And so that’s how I started. I started out as a part time hypnotist.
My first client was a woman next door, and I worked with her for weight loss, and she paid me with spaghetti dinners. But I learned that you always have to charge something because if it’s free, they’re not going to think it’s worth anything.
There’s so many things inside of everything you just shared that this could become the map for many more conversations. What I love is that how the story kind of begins, in the way that said, politely, of course, and not reflecting on you, but to some of the materials, it’s the things that we would now think, oh, we need to give the pre talk to get rid of those misconceptions. No, that was delivering at 100%, and that’s why you wanted it, which I love. And somehow it made me flashback to I had a car that I had just purchased. This would have been like, I think, 2004, 2005. And there’s a part of a vehicle called the idle air control system, and it’s the part of the car that tells it to not shut off when you stop at a stop sign or a stoplight.
And mine died. And that’s a really big deal, apparently, because the car would just turn off and then have to be restarted. And of course, I was driving downtown New York City at the time. So by comparison, this is the point of bringing this up. By comparison, every time driving in a city since that one moment, easy. And I’m just imagining you said 910 years old. There’s mom. And it’s having to flip through the pages of the book to go. Now what do I do? I love those moments, too, of the, holy crap, it’s actually working, too.
Yes. And I tell that story to my classes, not my clients, but when I do classes, and I said, people are so into, well, how do I get the person in? Hypnosis and inductions are really easy. So I was able to hypnotize my mother reading from a book.
Well, let’s go into that, because actually, the first time that you and I ever met, I was at a conference, and I saw a workshop that grabbed my attention only for one reason. One, it had a good name, a PoTPouRRI of inductions. But if I remember at the time, it was like, the only one that I saw that was like 3 hours long. And just the side story to this is the time that I was bringing Roy hunter into the Virginia area, and someone goes, how is he going to cover two days one technique, two days on just parts therapy? He’s going to run out of StuFF to talk about. I’m like, it’s going to be nerding out on this one method for two days. And I saw your workshop these 3 hours on just inductions.
So LookInG at it from that angle, what’s the benefit, would you say, to being flexible with a variety of styles?
Well, one size does not fit all. Yeah, progressive relaxation is great, and I use it as a deepening technique. But most of my inductions are the one. Most people I use that I invented the Ambrahamsen induction technique out there with.
Your name all over it.
Yeah, that’s it. Yeah, might as well, right? So what’s unique about my induction is that it tests the client without the client even being aware of it. I have them usually stare at a spot, and I proceed to say that your eyelids are relaxing and your whole body is relaxing. I’m going to count. And it operates on the double bind technique or the double bind idea of whether they. Well, I count from one to five, and could I share it? I’m going to count from one to five, and when I reach the count of five, you’ll find your eyes close. And when your eyes close, you allow yourself to go into hypnosis one. But resist that feeling until after. Until after I say the number five. And only then do you close your eyes.
And when your eyes close, you allow yourself to go into hypnosis. So I start counting, and your eyelids are fluttering, and they’re tearing now. And only tell the client, or tell the person that you’re hypnotizing. What you see is what they’re doing. So finally, they do close their eyes at five, and they’re in hypnosis. So people say, well, how do you know they’re in hypnosis? I said, well, I’ll get to the resistant part. I says, because now I’m going to test them. First. I pick up their arm, and I drop it and I pick up their arm and I drop it. But I drop it in their lap. I pick up it twice and drop it in their lap. The third time I pick it up and drop it, I’ll bringing it off to the side, and I’m dropping it in my hand.
Now, if they’re using their conscious critical mind, they will most likely bring their hand back to their lap. And I keep working with the hand until I get that limp feeling. And if they try and help me, I say, no, don’t help me. You’ve worked very hard. This time is for you. Just relax the arm and let it plop. And I would keep working with that. So now I have their arm very relaxed. So then I say to them, in a moment, I’m going to count from one to three. When I reach the count of three, you’ll open your eyes and immediately close them again. Each and every time you open and close your eyes, you go deeper into hypnosis. Is that okay with you? And I wait for a nod, one, two, three, and they open their eyes.
And then I say, close them again, like a slow blink, and I’ll pass my hand in front of their eyes. One, two, three, and I’ll get a rhythm going. They open their eyes on 312-312-3123. If they open their eyes before I say the number three, they’re not really in hypnosis because they’re using their conscious critical mind. And I would keep going. Now only open your eyes at the count of three. So they’re in hypnosis. And now I’ll proceed with whatever I’m going to do. And I would say, okay, now relax all the muscle groups in your scalp, and I would do a modified progressive relaxation.
I love that, because anything involving getting feedback, the fact that something’s actually getting verified, that it’s not to put down any specific technique, but so often people are working simply from a state of assumption. Well, I said relax. They look like they’re relaxed. I guess something’s happening, and it’s know there’s always a content of the methods that we’re using, but also the context is what it’s actually doing, and it’s where I’m most often doing. Kind of a classic style Dave Elman induction, yet for very different reasons, because we’re getting feedback in real time, and I’m sure along the way, I mean, tell me if this is also providing this benefit from your perspective, that it’s also training both you and the client how to interact with each other. And it’s streamlining the rest of the process, too.
Yes. But now, going back to the double bind, you may have a contrary client, and as I’m going to say in a moment, I’m going to count from one to five, resist that feeling, and then, and only then, when you close your eyes, you’ll allow yourself to go into hypnosis. So a contrary client might say she wants me to wait till five. I’ll show her. I’ll close my eyes and go into hypnosis before she says five. Does it make any difference if you follow the instructions and wait till five or if you don’t follow the instructions and close your eyes before five? I linked. When you close your eyes, you allow yourself to go into hypnosis. And then, of the two tests, of course, are the arm drop and the eyelids opening and closing.
Yeah. And do you find that by, how would you say that influences the rest of the process then?
Well, I would think that the client will realize and it’s ratified that their arm was relaxed and they followed the instructions about opening and closing their eyes. So in that regard, I think the trance is ratified in the mind of the client.
Now, I’d ask a question here, then, which is that sometimes we create methods out of necessity. Is this something that was workshopped over time and then seeing that when this happens, I need to have another mechanism, and it just kind of morphed on its own?
Sort of.
Yeah.
Sort of.
You’re in good company on that one. There was a time, I think this might have been in the first 50 or so episodes. I had Melissa tears on the program, and it was. So do you find the research and then create the technique to model the research, or do you create the technique and then cherry pick the research that then backs up your method? She goes, I got to say, at some points, it’s a little bit of both.
Other hypnotists use the arm drop to see if the client is relaxed. Another hypnotist used the eyes opening and closing, but as a deepening technique, as a fractionization technique. So I said, well, that’s good. So what would happen if I tell them not to open their eyes until I say three and then stall? So that accidentally came about when I went one, two, and then instead of saying three, right away, I stalled, and the client had their eyes closed. I said, that’s a good idea.
Love that.
I’m sure your listeners might want to think about this online. How do you do this online? Because you can’t pick up and drop their arm if you’re doing it online. So online, I would do both tests, and the first thing I would do is I would demonstrate to the client while their eyes are open, what I want. And then I’ll ask them to bring their hand in front of their face and make a fist. And then I’ll tell them, make a fist. And that’s what I’m going to ask you to do. When you’re under hypnosis, I’ll show them what I want them to do, because online, you can’t reach out and touch them like the commercial says. And then I picked up a little trick.
I said to them, as long as you could feel your fingernails in the palm of your hand, you cannot open your hand. Okay. So they have to feel their fingers. They won’t be able to open their hand. Unless, of course, you got a contrary client, then you have to do something else. But that works 95% of the time.
Well, it’s by giving something that the mind pays attention to the whole competing focus that as long as they’re focusing on that becomes that dominant awareness. It’s in the neighborhood of the classic. As long as they’re putting tension in that arm is not going to bend yet. It’s also filling that mind with that specific awareness of, well, bypassing critical faculty. There’s that selective thinking right there. Yeah. This reminded me of how I know that the way you do self hypnosis is a bit different as well. That rather than go into hypnosis, deliver the suggestions. You’ve kind of reversed that order.
Yes, I studied with Richard Hart, as I said, but I also studied with Harry Aarons. And this self hypnosis technique that I learned from Richard Hart goes all the way back to Harry Aarons. All suggestions have to be, well, I teach the client self hypnosis in three steps. The first step, I ask them to say to themselves every night before they go to bed, every day, in every way, I get better and better, which is starting to program their mind. And I ask them to say it ten times and keep count on their fingers. And after they say it ten times, they can go to sleep. That’s step one. Step two is I ask them to pick the spot on the wall, take three deep breaths and close their eyes, and then count backward from 50 to one.
At this pace, 504-948-4746 all the way to one. And when you reach the count one, I teach this to them under hypnosis. And then I say, and when you reach the count of one, don’t do it now but when you reach the count of one, open your eyes and go about your business. And it’s very helpful if you find the time to do it only takes about two and a half to three minutes. And if you find the time to do it twice a day, it would better than once a day. But if you can only do it once a day, that’s great. So that’s step two. Now, step three, we formulate the suggestion. Now, the suggestions have to be formulated in a certain way. They have to have action.
They have to be positive, they have to be simple, they have to believable, they have to be measurable, and they have to carry a reward. They have to be in the present tense. So I say, okay, now what do you want to accomplish? And let’s just say the person wants to exercise more. They have a treadmill. That’s right. Now, it’s a coat hanger, but they want to exercise more. So I say, okay, what do you want to do? Well, every day I want to walk on the treadmill for 30 minutes. I said, well, how long do you walk on the treadmill? Now, I don’t do it at all. But you want to go from not doing it to doing it every day. I don’t know. Okay, how about. And then I’d coach them.
Would you be willing to do it for ten minutes, three days a week? Oh, yeah, that’s easy. Great. But I want to do more. Okay, you can do more, but at least commit to ten minutes, three days a week. Okay, what three days? Now, I want to narrow it down and get it very specific. Okay, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Okay, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. When? At what time? 07:00 a.m.. Okay, so every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 07:00 a.m. I walk on the treadmill. And what do you want as a reward? They may say, and I lose weight or, and I feel good. Or if they don’t come up with anything, I would suggest it could be as simple as, and I feel good about myself. So now I’m coaching them into formulating the suggestion. So now they have their suggestion. Step three.
Instead, you look at the spot on the wall, and you write down your suggestion on a card. You hold that suggestion in front of you, and you read it three times. Every. At 07:00 a.m. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I walk on the treadmill, and I feel great. You say that three times. After you say that three times, you close your eyes, and then that suggestion will go around in your head. For two and a half to three minutes, you don’t have to do anything else. At the end of two and a half to three minutes, your body, your mind knows when it’s time to open your eyes because you set that time when you count it backward from 50 to one. So that’s the way I teach self hypnosis.
Yeah. What I love about that, too, is I think of how sometimes there’s the question that pops up, let’s say, in a training or in various conversations and surround, what do you do with a client for this issue? What do you do with a client with that issue? And you just gave us this master class example of ask the client. And this is not to poke fun of any one specific method. It was a time that I got a phone call, and it was, I’m working with this person. She says that she’s addicted to sugar, and we’re just not getting any sort of traction in the sessions. I go, well, what are you doing so far? Well, we’ve done like four sessions on forgiveness for this event that she said really wasn’t that traumatic. She completely moved on from it.
But that’s what came up during the session, and we’re still stuck on this forgiveness issue. Have you thought about talking about the sugar thing? Sometimes it’s that more direct, obvious route, and it brings it in. And I love the way, too, that I don’t want to even put a technique on this, the common sense approach of, well, to go from zero to this many a day, let’s get this in motion first. And by doing so, we’re racking up those wins within the mind of the client, too.
Risks.
Yeah. I’d be curious to ask, and I have a feeling that this might also be a question that you have full permission to go next one. No. Which is that many of the names that we would often encounter inside of the things that are the actual textbooks, the elements of our world from Harry Aarons. And while it may not be the only depth scale, that’s the one that I’d say kind of caught on as the most widespread. Any insights you can share in terms, know, learning from these people directly in your history?
Harry Aarons was a piece of work. Have you ever met him?
No, I never did.
Well, he started the association to advance ethical hypnosis.
Yeah.
And at one point, I was the executive director of the AAEH, and were having conferences in Newark, New Jersey, every year. But when the original executive director passed away about 1990 or so, the membership on his books was 900 members in actuality, when we dove into all of the records, we had about maybe 100 and 2125 members that actually paid their dues. I mean, you could say you’re a member of this or a member of that, but unless you actually pay your dues, you’re not a member. But Marty had 900 people on the books, and he used to send out mail to 900 people. And he was also the membership chairperson. So he was the executive director, the membership chairperson, and the editor of suggestion magazine. So when he passed away, the organization really started like, oh, my God, now what do we do?
So I was the executive director. Somebody else took over suggestion magazine, but Harry Aarons was still around, I think, when Uncle Marty died. I’m not sure, but I’m sorry, I’m diverging there. Harry Aarons was a curmudgeon. That’s the best way I could describe him.
That is the fourth time I’ve heard that exact word. Yes. I love this, because often we see these names and it’s often the reminder that, again, that’s right. They were people.
I don’t know how he would get people into hypnosis, but he did. And I think it was basically his reputation. He had an excellent reputation of being a hypnotist in New Jersey, and he did a lot of good work. When I studied with him, it was almost like, okay, here’s the method. Go do it. Aren’t you going to show us? All right. You want me to show you? All right, come on up here. I’ll show you. And it was that type of thing. Now, there was a meeting in Philadelphia of the conference. We had a conference in Philadelphia, and Shirley Wright, myself, and Harry Arrens were going to drive down together. Now, at that time, I was the secretary of the AAeh, and I had to be at the meeting on time. The meeting started at 09:00. We picked up Harry Aarons at 07:00.
It would take maybe an hour and a half to 2 hours. No, we picked him up at 6:30. It would take that long time to get there. So we pass a rescue area, and Harry Aaron says, I have to stop. Okay, we stop. He says, I want to buy you guys breakfast. Harry, we don’t have enough time to have breakfast. I’m Harry Aarons. I started this organization. They’ll wait for me. Well, guess what? We got there at 10:00. The meeting had already started. I got bawled out because I wasn’t there in time, and they had somebody else starting to record the minutes. That was Harry Aarons.
I love that because often this is the origin of the inside joke that apparently I was the first to bring into this, which is the whole, just a reminder, we help people. But it’s that as folks are often referencing back to specific trainers or way that things were done, it’s looked at in sometimes. Now here’s the disclaimer to the disclaimer I’m about to say, which is that, yes, there are some who approach things from that absolute, this is the only way to do it. Yet you find that there’s this greater flexibility or that might have been the way that this person did it that one specific time, and that was their specific pathway into it. And that’s the one that got documented, as it were.
So by looking at it from these angles and just seeing, it’s like, well, no, it’s the same as my argument around all the polarity that shows up around scripts. It’s like, well, if you look at it as if this was the way it was done with one specific client one specific day, given the specific things they said, that’s probably believe what you would have done too. So look at it as the model of an example as opposed to that’s the way they always did it.
So were having these conferences and the membership was dwindling. So finally Dwight Damon wanted the AAEh to merge in with the NGH, just like the clergy organization did, just like some other organizations did. And up until that know we wanted to do our own thing, so to speak. But the executive board got together myself, Jim Cullum, Walter Brockelman’s. Do you know who Walter Brockelman’s is? Or was?
I believe in passing once. I could be mixing up names though, but I’m familiar with the person. Yes.
Okay, so he was the president of the organization and a lot of people didn’t know that he paid out of his own pocket whatever we couldn’t cover for the conferences. So finally it was decided, know we should merge in with the NGH. And that’s what we did. And it was fine.
Yeah. Again, the history of it all coming together and that’s always fascinating. Something that I’d love to kind of transition to, if you’re fine with it. I’m sure you are. Which is that I was delighted a couple of months back when suddenly envelope arrived by mail and it was a book. And now I see there’s three of them. Could you share about the books that are available on Amazon or. I believe it’s two now, right?
It’s two now with one in the works.
That’s what it was. Yeah.
One is called self hypnosis. Easy as one, two, three, subtitled three minutes to change your life. And that is basically for anybody who wants to learn self hypnosis. The second book is a potpourri of hypnotic techniques, adding the wow factor to your practice. And in this book, we’ve got inductions, we’ve got an explanation of hypnosis, we have deepening techniques, we have uncovering techniques all in one little book. And basically, this is for hypnotists or anybody who wants to learn a little more about hypnosis. This book came about because over the years, I printed my own little booklets on hypnosis. One was hypno learning, another one was self hypnosis. Another one was inductions.
And I would sell these little booklets for 5.95 7.95, something like that, at conferences, and people would pick up the little booklet and say, and one person entitled it, oh, look, Cliff Notes for hypnosis. Oh, I had one on ericksonian hypnosis. So each of these little booklets got reedited and all combined into that potpourri book.
I love that just for the nature of how it’s something again, that developed over time. And clearly from this, what I call the worker mindset of really being out there working with people. And if I tweak it this way, if I tweak it that way, what’s the one that’s in the works?
The one in the works is weighing in on hypnosis. Change your habits for permanent weight loss. So if people go to Amazon and type in my name, Joann Abrahamsen, J-O-A-N-N. Abrahamsen. A-B-R-A-H-A-M-S-E-N. These two books would come up. If people go to my website, same spelling, joannambrahamsen.com, and download a free booklet, guide to the subconscious mind, they’ll be on my mailing list, and when the new book is out, they’ll get notified.
Could I tell you indirectly why this is already, and this is actually episode number 431. We’ve been at this for a while. And anybody out there listening, if you head to worksmarthypnosis.com/431. The day that this releases, or anytime after that, it’s going to come out on December 21. But again, worksmarthypnosis.com/431 will compile all those links directly and put them on that page. That way they’re easy to track down. But as I was saying, this is already one of my favorites ever, because typically at this point, I’d ask, where can people find those. And you just naturally did it. And then, like, 25 minutes ago, you started to describe a technique, and I normally would have gone, could you give us a picture of what that looks like? And you just taught it.
And then talk to us about doing self hypnosis. And you went directly into that teaching mode, and I’m sure, well, I’ve got both the books here. That level of quality, that level of attention to detail, and not for the sake of you, let me do my job a whole lot easier today. I kind of bring this all together with a question I don’t ask too often here yet. What is it that keeps that excitement around hypnosis still burning for you, still ignited for you?
I don’t know what it is that keeps it still excited, but whenever something works, I’m still, like, going back to the, oh, wow, look at that. It still works. And of course, you know that I’m a very deep hypnotic subject.
Yes.
And I love being hypnotized myself. So when I have the opportunity to be hypnotized, like on a stage show, I jump at the chance because I just love it. And I’m like a kid in a candy store. I’m looking at all these people who are teaching, and I’m saying, yeah, I like that. Yeah, I like that. Wow. The first NGH hypnosis conference I went to was 1989. I went in 1989. They were doing it in New York City, which is like 30 minutes from me. And I went to every talk. They were having talks, I think, in a row. I don’t know if they were doing simultaneous, but they were having talks in a row. No break for lunch.
So I went to every talk, and if it didn’t interest me, I left that room, went into another room, and did not take a break. So I’m still excited by hypnosis. And I want to tell all the newer hypnotists around there, around here that keep that excitement going. And I envy the new ones because they have such an amazing world to learn in front of them.
Hey, it’s Jason once again. And as always, thank you so much for engaging with this program, interacting with it online, as well as hanging out with our amazing guests. Head over to worksmarthypnosis.com. Four, three, one. That’ll link you directly over to see where to pick up Joanne’s books and the other resources she’s made available. And while you’re there, check out worksmarthypnosislive.com. Empower your skills of hypnotic phenomenon and conversational change. Wrap it all in this incredible bouquet. Can we go with that? Because this is a potpourri themed episode of evidence based strategies, and you can watch the video tour and reserve your spot in the next class right now over at worksmarthypnosislive.com. Thanks for listening to the Work Smart Hypnosis podcast at worksmarthypnosis.com.
